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It is a great pleasure to present Special Guest Blogger Bruce Wiseman, [email protected] author and Master Marketer. Visit Bruce’s company website at http://www.ontargetresearch.com for more information on the benefits available for your company with correct use of the technology of Marketing and Positioning.

$5 Down And $.75 A Week by Bruce Wiseman

When my father was a young man, he stowed away on a tramp steamer to Hawaii.

He was a tough little guy who had boxed in his youth and had the nose to prove it. But he also had the gift of the pitch. And once in the land of many Alohas, he traveled door-to-door selling the hot, new vacuum-tube Philco radios to the islanders. It was the beginning of broadcasting’s Golden Age, and he did well.

When he returned stateside he opened an appliance store in Berkeley and the rest, as they say….

Well…perhaps not quite history, but the store in Berkeley was the first of what became an extremely successful chain of home furnishing stores throughout the San Francisco East Bay Area in the 40s, 50s,and 60s.

No pay-per-click budgets to monitor, no social media to maintain, no websites to optimize. “Traffic” was driven into the store by traditional media where you could engage the prospects in conversation and sell them.

In the early days, he used print exclusively; later, he added radio and a bit of television.

He was a master at negotiating great pricing from the manufacturers, which he passed along to his customers, but if there was a single key to his success, it was heavy promotion.

He was the Cal Worthington of the Bay Area Home Furnishing world. It may not have been the most sophisticated position, but it worked.

My dad and the WISEMAN’S brand are long gone. So imagine my surprise when my youngest daughter, in a self-motivated journey into our family’s genealogy, stumbled across her grandfather’s earliest ads promoting the opening of his first store, and sent them to me.

Here is an historically interesting look at one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s more successful merchandisers (he was Northern California’s most successful Frigidiare dealer in the mid twentieth century.)

The ads themselves aren’t particularly unique, but note the financing terms! Even in 1940, $.75 a week had to attract interest. Selling “terms” was another of his successful actions.

But put a bib on before scrolling much further so you when you drool at the prices, it doesn’t get on your shirt or blouse.

There is more about one of the most successful new marketing actions below the pictures, but take a scroll through the advertising of 70 years ago and then pick up the narrative below.

Some things have changed.

Yes, merchants still advertise in newspapers, but traditional advertising revenue has been falling like the President’s poll numbers. Ad revenue has fallen 48% since 2006. Some of the country’s most preeminent newspapers have gone under, while even the venerable New York Times recently announced staff reductions due to “a deteriorating advertising climate”.

Meanwhile, online advertising continues to soar because that is where the public shops today. E-commerce is projected to have reached $680 billion in 2011, an increase of 18.9% over 2010. No surprise then that Internet advertising amounted to $26.04 billion in 2010 making it the second largest advertising channel behind television at $28 billion, but surpassing newspapers at $22 billion.

If you’re in business, if you sell a product or service, you had better have a website.

But, of course, a website isn’t enough. You have to get the shoppers to your site. You can promote your website address, of course, and should. But consider the following information from www.slumdogmarketer.com:

97 % of American Internet users use the Internet to shop (NPD Group).

And, 63% of consumers turn to the Internet first for information about local companies.

But here is the critical fact: according to a study by Webvisible.com and Nielson Online, 82% use search engines to find what they are looking for (Google has 64% of the search engine traffic, Yahoo has 18% and Microsoft’s Bing has 12%).

Which raises the question: are your ad dollars properly allocated?

The Webvisible/Nielson study also found that the top sources for local information by shoppers were:

The story is told in some detail by an inadvertent leak of a massive amount of keyword search data by AOL (AOL uses Google search). The leak involved 20 million key-words searched by 650,000 users over a period of three months. The leak was in 2006, but remains revealing.

If you want to know how important the ranking of your website is on a search engine page take a look:

If your are in the #1 position on the page you get 42.1% of the clicks.

#2 position, 11.9% of the clicks — 3.5x less than #1

#3 position, 8.5% of the clicks — 4.9x less than #1

#4 position, 6.1% of the clicks — 6.9x less than #1

#5 position, 4.9% of the clicks — 8.5x less than #1

#6 position, 4.1% of the clicks — 10.4x less than #1

#7 position, 3.4% of the clicks — 12.3x less than #1

#8 position, 3% of the clicks — 14x less than #1

#9 position, 2.85% of the clicks — 14.8x less than #1

(The leaked data is widely available on the Internet. This math courtesy of Netmark.com.)

Which in turn leads me to share a success with you that will blow you mind.

A friend of mine in New York named Tom Jacoby, does search engine optimization. But he has developed a unique methodology that drives your website up the search engine pages like a heat- seeking missile.

I know, this sounds like a commercial, but bear with me, this is startling.

He ties your product or service to a location:

Sandals, Honolulu

Pawn Shop, Las Vegas

Vegan Market, Berkeley

Tires, Daytona

Organic Dog Food, Santa Monica

Cosmetic Surgery, Beverly Hills

You get seven zip codes or cities and seven key words. So, for example, a beauty saloon in Burbank could have

Beauty Saloon Burbank

Hair Coloring Burbank

Hair and Make-Up Burbank

Pedicure Burbank

Hair Extentions Burbank

Highlights and Coloring Burbank

Hair Pieces and Wigs Burbank

Then, in addition, they would get these same seven key-words in six other jurisdictions, say, for example: Toluca Lake, Universal City, Sunland, Glendale, Hollywood, North Hollywood. Seven cities, seven key-words.

And boy does it work.

An On Target client, to whom we referred Tom earlier in the year, has had a handsome affluence running for months, attributable in part to this service.

But let me get personal. One might think that this would only work for a local business. Not so. I engaged the service for On Target Research some months ago. We aren’t local; our clients are all over the United States. So I picked 7 key cities and 7 key words and turned Tom loose.

One of the survey services that large corporate clients often seek is Customer Loyalty Surveys. This was one of the key words I used in seven major cities across the country.

The result?

If you put “Customer Loyalty Surveys Los Angeles” into Google, you will see that we are number one on the list. We are also number one for “Customer Loyalty Surveys New York”. Number two on the list for Chicago.

Did this help our sales? On Target has just had its best year in over a decade.

Referrals (word of mouth) is the most hassle-free inexpensive form of advertising. Always has been and likely always will be.

So why bother to promote if you get referrals for most of your business?

It’s the chicken and the egg conundrum. Which comes first? You have to maintain enough traffic coming into your business to achieve the desired level of quality (by having proper staff and materials) to keep expanding. Otherwise the referrals dry up. The idea is to keep clients or customers coming in from every possible source, not just one source.

In the 21st century what do most of your “referrals” do when making the decision to see you or use your service or business? Answer: They Google your service and compare! I am willing to bet that if you asked every customer or client you have if they searched your product or service on the internet before arriving to you over 60% will say yes, whether they had you as a referral or not.

If 85% of your customers come from referrals and 15% come from other sources of advertising how does that compare with your profit margin? If your profit margin is within the 10% to 20% range (a usual amount for small to mid-range business) then the customers you get from advertising could represent a portion of that amount which puts you above the level of make-break.

It is all about return on investment. Sometimes the return on investment is not as apparent as we would like it to be. A simple question to your customers of “how did you hear about us” does not necessarily tell the whole story. An additional question “did you search our service on the internet (not just our website)” will give you more information.

There are many ways to determine if your investment in advertising is yielding you the return you want. With internet marketing you can use programs to track the amount of traffic you get from various keyword searches. There is not a foolproof method. In advertising your key is exposure. How much is the word out about your service (the more the better)?

Do all that you can to increase the referrals coming in. They are the best source of new business. Flank it with internet marketing and maintaining an excellent quality of service or product and you will be at the top of the heap, truly NUMBER ONE ON THE LIST.

Personal relationships resulting in referrals are the best source of new business, no doubt.

The problem with getting referrals is that your sources (personal relationships) do not consistently send a sufficient quantity of referrals to you.

Your internet presence does not usually drive sales directly unless you are selling commodities, like white XL 100% cotton tee shirts or the new Ironman DVD. You want to make contact with potential Customers, collect their email addresses and further contact info and inform and help these potential Customers. Ultimately, you build a relationship and then offer your products or services that they need and want.

How do you connect with potential customers, people who are interested in your services? Getting referrals is best. If you don’t have enough referrals, get your website on page one of relevant Google searches.

What might your target market be searching for? Porterhouse steak for two? Then you should be on page one of Google searches for “porterhouse steak for two” in your service area, for example “new hyde park ny porterhouse steak for two”. When you try that search are your competitors there?

Return On Investment is the practical way to measure the effectiveness of any marketing you do, right? How much new business, work you would not have gotten otherwise, would you have to bring in to make a SEO and SEM program worthwhile?

If you moved into a new house and you had no furniture at all for the family room, you might have decided to invest in a big beautiful leather couch. You picked up a few pieces that went with the leather couch and you’re done, the leather couch was the major investment that handled the family room.

My Favorite Web Designs websites are optimized for search, with the SEO designed in from the beginning. This keeps your expenses down when it’s time to put your new website in front of your targeted public and gets you high search engine results placement faster.

– Do a Google search for your product or service. Find a few websites you like and discuss them, decide on the features you like the best.

– Continue or revise your own brand, your identity, who your business is, what your business does and what your Customers get from you.

– What are the keywords and phrases your potential customers use to describe your business? how do Customers find your business? Questions for your Customers might be “How did you hear about us?” or “How did you find our product or service?”

– Where are your Customers? Your accounting records can show you where the majority of your customers are. You can draw a circle on the map with your location in the center. You can target that new office park or development.

You’ve gotten some good information on

(1) ideas for your website
(2) your business identity or brand
(3) your keyword phrases
(4) the locations you want to service

And you’re ready to claim your territory on the internet.

Phonebooks are 20th Century paperweights. Everybody looks for everything on the internet. Put your business where Customers are looking. Get it all done at a deep discount. The bottom line question is “How many new customers, that you would not gotten otherwise, will it take for the return on investment to work for you?”

Your keywords are the words and phrases your potential customers use to search for your website. This is your business identity, your brand. It is how Customers describe your business and that is very often different from how you describe your business. These keyword phrases should be used appropriately on your webpages.

Your “press release” is your own descriptive and unique information, your original content about yourself and your business. This is several pages long, written in the 3rd person and includes what makes your business special and unique, what is different about you compared to your competitors, some biographical info about you, some history of the business, what results might reasonably be expected for a client – you get the idea.

NumberOneOnTheList.com can generate many links to your website from the most popular and highest rated websites on the internet which will increase your search engine ranking. Link popularity is key because the search engines use both the number of links and the quality of the websites that link to your site (“backlinks”) to determine how popular your site is and what your ranking should be.

What to expect: search engine listings linking to your site will start to populate the top rankings for the keyword phrases on page one of the search engines. As more and more of your links are at the top of searches, your actual website will start to appear on the top 10 links. If you have several pages being promoted then you will see multiple pages in the top 10. This is what has been observed with other clients. NumberOneOnTheList.com guarantees that link popularity services will do for you as has been done for other clients and that your site will have many “high authority” sites linking to yours and this will cause your website’s ranking on the search engines to improve.

Before NumberOneOnTheList.com, I founded and for 21 years managed a NYC and Long Island messenger service, using Hubbard Management Technology as a member of WISE. What was successful at the messenger service was team-building internally using business communication skills, formulas for business success to change conditions for the better based on management by statistics and relationship-building externally by standing behind our service and personally ensuring Customer satisfaction. The goal was to provide services as part of our Customer’s company, an outsourced adjunct to the mailroom in most cases, sharing and operating on our Customer’s concerns and priorities.

85 percent of internet users start with a search engine. 80 percent of search engine users do not go beyond page one of search results. The business website that places higher in search engine results will get noticed first.

In my opinion, unless being on Facebook is how you earn your living or unless you’re looking for work, limit yourself, or the personnel who handle social media for the business, to one hour per day and no more than 5 hours per week. If you’re running an ad campaign on Facebook then you can deduct that time from time spent on social media as it’s time spent earning your living.

(3) At the end of a press release or blog post, put your full email signature including your various appropriate badges.

(4) If you use vcards (virtual business cards) you can include links to your social media pages.

(5) Appropriate self promotion with industry news is better than a sales pitch.

(6) Provide information from other sources so that you make yourself a valuable resource.

Any questions on anything I’ve said, you can always Google it as a question (example “What is a vcard?”).

Give credit when you quote a source and strive to add value by making your social media page the place to go for industry info. For example, if you’re writing about Google then check YouTube for the latest GoogleWebmasterHelp.

In my opinion, a social media mistake for a business is to start playing games. “I got you a pink hairless piglet from Pigville” is beyond boring, it’s irrelevant and many people, especially employed people, find social media games obnoxious.

Remember, you want to keep it to 5 hours per week, right?

A savvy objective for your social media campaign is to build your reputation for providing quality industry information.